IT spending in schools is forecast to hit £1.29bn per year by 2012 as the government’s £45bn schools revamp gathers pace, raising the profile of IT in education.

Schools will spend £1.05bn on IT in 2008-2009, but the £4.5bn earmarked for IT under Building Schools for the Future (BSF) will help drive annual growth of 5.3 per cent over three years, according to research by Kable.

The part IT plays in the schools transformation programme is actually greater than its share of the budget, according to Steve Moss, strategic director for IT at Partnerships for Schools (PfS), the public body responsible for BSF.

“Because 10 per cent of BSF is IT money and the programme has been running for a few years now, a lot more money is being spent on IT in education than before it started,” he said.

“IT punches above its weight in terms of its transformational impact, and it is the innovative IT environments and equipment that are almost as likely as the buildings to have that impact.”

BSF provides IT funding equivalent to £1,675 per pupil place in each new or remodelled school to cover network infrastructure and equipment, hardware, software and managed services.

PfS expects 35 schools to open between 2008 and 2009, followed by 115 in 2009-2010, 165 in 2010-2011 and 200 for each subsequent year of the programme, which could run for up to 20 years.

“Schools develop an output specification and the ICT partner proposes solutions that match the school’s strategy for change,” said Anne Casey, education IT adviser at PfS.

“They have a shared learning platform that supports the Every Child Matters agenda and are looking at how adaptive and enabling technologies can support all learners.

The BSF process means that there is a wide variety of solutions matched to need. Each local authority will have certain unique and distinct features and the ICT will reflect this.”